Your employee brand

You can easily talk about your company’s brand and the image presented to customers and suppliers. Could you say the same about the brand image of your employees? Do you know how current and former employees describe your business and what it’s like to work with you? This is a harder question to answer. Not to mention, once you know the answer, you may or may not like it.

Beyond that, you may be thinking… why does this matter? Is it necessary to worry about employee branding when I have so many other things on my plate? Well, the short answer is “yes” and why is detailed below.

Recruitment

Your business is growing and you need to start placing help seeking ads and interviewing people. This can be easier or more difficult depending on the brand image of your employees.

• A good brand will receive quality resumes and many references. Referrals will come from employees, customers or vendors. They notice the good image you have and feel comfortable recommending others to work for you.
• A neutral brand will see good resumes and some references. People can be indifferent. If someone mentions that they are looking for a job or asks what the company is like, they will give their opinion but not offer it.
• With bad branding, you can imagine the type of resumes you’ll see or the quality of the references (if any). The resumes will be poor and the references will be none. Who would want to work in a workplace where everything they hear is negative? Not many.

Retention

As you know, keeping your good employees is key. These are the people who will keep your business going and make it grow. Having your good employees jump ship at the first sign of another offer is not something you want. If you have a bad or even toxic employee brand, your employees will even change jobs for less pay for a company with a good employee brand.

Customer service

While you provide customer service to your customers, on the front lines are your employees. I would prefer (and probably demand) that they provide excellent customer service to keep their customers. Anyone will tell you, it is better to retain your current customers. You don’t want to be the company that competes for new customers just to replace the ones that have left.

Marketing

Your employees, whether current or former, will be talking about your business. You don’t know who they are talking to or who is listening. Could it be a potential customer? A potential seller? A possible new employee? You don’t know. What you do know is that what they say could influence who becomes your customer, supplier or employee. This works both ways: positive and negative.

Create raving fans

That? I’m not a sports team. That’s true (well, maybe you are). The fact is that it doesn’t matter. You want raving fans, these are the people who speak positively about you and your company. In fact, they go beyond the positive to “Wow, this place is great.” This is great publicity, publicity, marketing and word of mouth. Who wouldn’t want this?

word of caution

Having a good or excellent employee brand is important, without a doubt. Where caution comes in is how you get there. Don’t assume that having a great brand means letting your employees get away with it, letting them do whatever they want and making them happy at all costs. What you need to do is be a great leader, set boundaries, and allow for appropriate discussions.

Simply put, it’s all about your company culture. Company culture = Employee brand.